OT: garbage haulers/ hazardous waste

It's already that way here. At night people drive around dumping off items that the recycle center won't take, tires, battery's, oil, chemicals, oil filters, etc:

Our County twice a year has a free dump day. Most of the time they will take all non-household garbage with hazzard waste. Other times then just tires and battery's, no appliances.

The County will however pick-up all trash if a neighborhood will pick-up and pile "ALL" trash along side of the road. We just have to call them after were done. Weird!!!

The County found if they don't offer the free dump days then people will find a place in the desert to do there dumping.

T_Bone

As far as getting rid of my old non-green florescent tubes...I wait until about 2AM and rocket them about 1/4 mile over into the side of my neighbor Dan's barn with a huge slingshot between two of my trees I made out of an old tractor tire innertube. His dogs go nuts and bark, his lights come on, then go back off. Next day he tells me a tall tail about how he chased a bear, badger, or something off, and I tell him "Huh, I must've slept through it all".

I probably can't blame a person making min. wage to not consider it as a option. The river used to get lots and lots of big cables from barges, but I think high scrap prices are helping that.

I'm not a tree hugger, but getting that way more every year as I see what is happening to my grandchildrens land. I'm very guilty of burning some questionable things in my wood furnace, but still wonder if it is not better than in a landfill.

Go to south of the border and see what our big business companies do with their waste. Seems funny they have property in Mexico that has no buildings, just a small stream.

Recycling just makes good sence, but it should be at the curbside to be effective. Our landfill is a half hr drive, so fuel that also messes up our air is taking it's toll as well.

Indians were here first, and I wonder how they would just cry at what we have done. I never throw anything from a car window, and certianly hope that my granchildren can get a clean drink of water.

All our big corperate farms may polute more than we like, but the older farms use water shed for removing manure, has always been that way. I recall as a child cleaning the hog floor off just prior to a rain so the manure would head for the stream.

I do construction work and kind of wonder how a shingle (that is very bad) can become OK if I give them lots of money. It is mixed in the same pile as the household trash. I'm very thankfull the landfill is not in my back yard however.

I burn wood as I stated before, and I just can't get over how much heat I can get from my household waste. Junk mail, boxes etc. Our fire department burns the brush pile for the town from time to time and I can't help but wonder how many houses that would have heated. I'm sure that someone has studied how much usable energy we waste with household trash, and bet we would be surprised.

My thoughts go to this town of 700 building a very large building with volenteer help. Placing a big wood furnace and heating the fire department and city hall etc. with clean burnable household waste. Comunity service is big in our justice system, and the imates enjoy doing something besides sitting in a cell. Many towns pick up the prisioners and use the free help, many are great workers, that found the wrong trail in life.

A large factory that makes plastic parts have many chillers that could heat lots of houses, tax breaks may help.

Another thing that I feel amusing is our county recieves $113,976,581 in corn payments in the last ten years. I can not think of any farmer getting these payments that burns corn for heat in their houses or hog buildings. We have many many acres in the set aside program that if turned into corn or soybean crops would probably give us enough fuel to make it free to our military and state owned vehickles. That is just a guess, but certianly seems like a step in good common sence. Again I best go take my blood pressure pills and get something done around here. Thanks for the therapy.

It gets downright funny here at my local landfill. Now granted most of it is because of the witch-in-the-window who refuses to let homeowners bring in even old shoes or such.

Anyhow, they've got a long driveway that goes between two high berms. It's remarkable the number of vehicles that she turns away that come out of the driveway empty. My goodness way tires and such sprout in the walls of those berms!

BTW, let me know if you ever find someone that actually takes brake fluid. Absolutely no one ever seems to know what to do with the stuff.

What intelligence? What sound judgement? Are we living on the same planet? I just finished reading a book about a young woman who sailed around the world alone twenty years ago. She described being in the Mediterranean at that time as never being out of sight of floating garbage. I read online recently that there is an area the size of Texas in the Pacific north of the Hawaiian Islands where ocean currents create sort of an eddy and it is almost totally covered with floating plastic garbage. Several years ago National Geographic magazine featured pictures of Eastern European industrial areas---absolutely no environmental protection laws to slow industry down. It looked like hell on a bad day.

Environmental laws are misinterpreted, misused, abused, and often seem quite stupid because all laws are that way. Name one sensible law that most people don't misunderstand, ignore, and complain about, and I'll go sit down and be quiet.

All the best, Stan

I work as an environmental consultant so I know the laws and regulations can seem, and often are stupid (the way the regulator use them is often the bigger problem) but we'd have an awful ugly world without them.

If people are bothered by them too much, they could always move to China - lots of economic oppurtunity there too - that is until their water runs out LOL.